


Life on the Street

by twistedchick



Series: Identity [6]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:16:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time undercover, Blair has more backup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life on the Street

It was starting to drizzle, cool and misty, and I didn't have a good place to wait out the weather. Damn. That's what happens when you're doing a stakeout undercover on the street. You can't do what you want; you have to take what life hands you, and deal.

As if that were any different from the rest of my life.

But I get by. It's cool.

At the moment, it's downright cold.

I'd been out here two days now, pretending to be a skinny street kid down on his luck, in my oldest beat-up leather jacket with the collar turned up over the back of my naked nape. No long hair to warm me any more, not since the Academy, and though the top was still curly and thick I could feel the breeze down my collar as if someone were standing there personally blowing it in.

This time I was keeping an eye on a crack house in the Industrial Zone, the narrow strip, four blocks wide at most, between the factories and the harbor. A century ago, this is where the sailors would've spent their time and money when they came into port. It hadn't changed much, except to look shabbier, mostly.

As usual there were patrol cars and unmarked cars checking the place out. That was normal. This time, however, the top brass had decreed that they wanted someone out on the street, undercover, to keep an eye on things as well. Of course, the fact that Narcotics had raided the building three times in the past and come up with empty hands had something to do with it.

I'd been in the bullpen finishing a report when Captain Argulies, head of Narcotics, had handed the case over to Simon; it hadn't been a pretty sight, but the orders had come from Chief Warren, and both Argulies and Simon knew better than to argue. Argulies saw the case transfer as an insult to his men. Simon, for his part, agreed. Instead of letting the situation devolve into a turf battle, he'd managed to work out a plan for a joint effort with Argulies, but with Major Crime detectives working undercover instead of Narcotics cops. Argulies couldn't argue; his own men and women had become too visible in the Industrial Zone, too identifiable. New faces on the street wouldn't hurt.

And, as the youngest in Major Crime, I was the newest face.

The rain let up, but I wasn't going to get off as easily as I'd wanted. I couldn't just call and come in, not yet. Simon had been adamant; I was needed out here, sitting in a doorway, being nobody in particular, watching the front and side entrances to 1836 South Fourteenth Street, keeping an eye out for Tyrone McSweeney or any of his cohorts. Every time Narcotics had hit the house before, McSweeney had disappeared into thin air; if he escaped again, I was supposed to figure out how.

This time I was a panhandler rather than a runaway; I was set up to look about eighteen, old enough to know better and young enough to still look vulnerable and open to the wrong possibilities -- just in case any should come along. Simon had told me to keep my eyes and ears open, as whatever I learned, however unimportant it seemed, might mesh into any of a dozen other open cases from the Industrial Zone.

I lounged back into a recessed doorway, taking up space and being as unobjectionable a drifter as I could manage. As a routine precaution, I rooted through the trash until I found a reasonably clean yogurt cup, wiped it out with a fairly clean rag, and stuck it on the street in front of my feet. I'd have to look as if I was earning my keep in order to eat. As long as I didn't go overboard on the food, I wouldn't starve or get busted.

Around ten a.m. on the third day out, I checked my pockets for the few dollars I'd hidden and walked down the block to Speedy's Sure-Fire Sausage Factory for the smallest portion of their homemade sausage and sauerkraut, with a side of beans. It wasn't health food, but I'd lived on worse as a grad student; I ate it on my way down the street, never out of sight of the house. I didn't know whose turf I was on, but I figured I'd be in a better situation if I kept moving.

At least I had food within range; I didn't have to stop surveillance to eat. And I had backup, in a parked car three blocks away where Jim sat and listened to me mutter occasional comments about the weather, the post-industrial decor of the neighborhood, or the people I saw around the target house.

I hadn't had to sleep in a dumpster or in one of the city shelters, fortunately. The department rented a few rooms in odd places, and I'd been given the key to one of them in a single-room-occupancy hotel around the corner, but I'd had to be back on the street by 6:30 a.m. in order to look authentic, as if I'd been in a shelter, so I hadn't had much sleep. Jim had snuck in for a while, kept me warm in the cold little room with the bad radiator, and we talked late into the night. He listened as I told him everything I'd picked up, and he brought me take-out from the deli near the station that was better than anything around here.

And now it was morning. I still had a little money and the room was paid for; that was better than I could've expected if I were out here for real. When I checked the mirror, on the way out of the room, I looked like a worn kid in secondhand clothes, just as I was supposed to.

I had to look good, but not too good. I didn't really want to turn into someone's rent boy, even if I looked like it. But I knew the rules: avoid trouble, don't lose your cover, get the information and stay alive to tell the rest of the team. When it came right down to facts, you did what you had to do to stay undercover and you'd get all the help you needed to deal with it later.

I'd deal.

I'd done this before.

I leaned back into the grubby painted-shut doorway, tipped my head against the frame and watched the outside light shining on the side door at 1836 East Fourteenth for the fourth hour in a row, mumbling a little about the things I saw, little weird observations and meanderings that wouldn't make sense to anyone except my Blessed Protector in the unmarked car down the street.

It wasn't much, but it kept me from going crazy waiting for something to happen. And, as I'd done ever since that first undercover job, I thought about wolves and bears, and symbolism and the kind of cultural constructions humans make that have little to do with their objects.

***

Wolves live in packs; they're social creatures in constant touch with their packmates. The alpha male guards the others, gets the best female, gets to the food first. The lowest-ranking wolf is like the buck private in an army; he's the one who ends up holding the buck everyone else has passed down the line. Even the lowest wolf, though, isn't forced to go out on his own.

People like to think that a wolf is a lone creature; it's a 19th Century type of romantic ideal. But that's all it is. If that lone wolf is singing to the moon, his packmates are probably the ones answering him from other hills nearby the hunting range of a wolf pack isn't terribly small.

The only time a wolf is ever totally alone is if all his pack and his mate are dead. Even then, if he's properly submissive, he may be adopted into another pack. It's a matter of life and death, of psychological need as well as the need to have others to hunt with.

***

"...man, that fox over there is hot, going into the big house. Wish I had her fur, man. Oh, man, she's jimmying the lock on the big house. No joke. Catch the show at eleven..."

The third sleekly dressed woman in two hours had walked into 1838 South Fourteenth, the townhouse next to the target. Either the place was a center for a sleazy stable of fashion models, or something very interesting was going down there. I glanced back down the street toward Jim, and saw him nod; he'd caught my reference and was making a note of it. He might even have recognized the woman.

I sat back and stared at my shoes. At least I'd been able to wear ones I felt comfortable in, even if the clothes were borrowed. After the next paycheck, it'd be a good idea to go get a new pair; I could feel my feet getting wet inside these, the water leaking down through the popped stitching past the lining.

In the next three hours I picked up about ten dollars, sitting down the street from the pawnshop again. It was a good place to panhandle, if for no other reason than that I could see Jim in the unmarked car, sitting with Rafe. My pack was keeping an eye on me. I only had to look like a lone wolf.

When nobody was around, I sat down in a doorway, and stared at signs. I hadn't realized I'd be so hungry for print, for something to read. This had to be one of the longest times I'd gone without reading a book in years. I stared at the flaking print on the yogurt container, and at the letters on the street signs. It felt so strange to be in a situation where having a book to read could blow my cover or, worse, get me or another cop killed. Blair Sandburg spent years as a scholar. Detective B.J. Sandburg had finished intensive study at the police academy, along with physical training and marksmanship, and still read every book he found interesting. The street kid I played was functionally illiterate, didn't think books were important. When I got bored it was hard to stay him, so hard not to just take a couple of dollars into the pawnshop and look for a cheap paperback or two.

But the kid wouldn't do that; it would take away from his chance to get a little more money in his pocket. So I didn't.

It was hard to keep track of time passing without a watch. Jim could do it outdoors by the position of the sun; I'd tried to do it that way a few times, but with the buildings around it wasn't as easy as it looked, not to mention that the rain totally blew off the idea. Occasionally I'd cruise by the pawnshop and check the old school clock in the window, one of those plain round ones with the white face and black case that every school I attended in America had on its walls. That clock hadn't been dusted since long before the first time I came out undercover on the street, more than a year ago, and it was hard to read through the blurred glass if the light was wrong.

I thought about cruising through the pharmacy across the street from the pawnshop, but gave it up as a bad deal. For one thing, if I were going to stay in character I'd probably have to shoplift something; for another, I didn't need anything badly enough to go there. And, for a third, the place was already home turf to a group of young tough guys that I was hoping would ignore me.

They didn't.

They swaggered toward me, making comments about the rent boy that I ignored. There were four of them, big enough to think they were intimidating by size alone, all about a year or two older than I was supposed to be.

"Hey, you. What you doin' on my street?"

"Nothing." I tried for a place between passive and assertive. The kid I was playing wouldn't get aggressive when he couldn't win.

"I dunno 'bout that. You look real pretty to me." He wasn't the biggest of them, but he was probably the oldest, tall and lean and sounding amused. He had a green bandanna poking out of the pocket of his ripped jacket, as did all the others.

I stared back at them, not saying anything, and tipped the cup in my pocket to dump the few bills and coins. All else failing, I could break the cup with my hand and have a sharp plastic edge as a weapon. It wouldn't buy me much, but if it bought me a little that might be enough.

"You puttin' out on our turf, punk?"

"Just tryin' to get by, man." Out of the corner of my eye I saw more of the group coming out of the pharmacy, looking around, seeing their friends cornering me, and coming to back them up.

Inside, I'm howling for the pack. Outside, I'm trying to figure how many of them I'll be able to take down before my cover is shot. I didn't think a black eye or worse would help a bit.

The front guy shoved me back into the brickwork with one lean hand, just a push to get me off balance. I let the hand go by and stayed on my feet, something that daily aikido training had helped me do. It wasn't part of the academy training, but was offered in the evenings; learning it was a major reason I'd decided to stay at the academy instead of commute. Aikido is designed for small people to use in dealing with larger ones; its creator was smaller and lighter than I was. I'd kept it up since, and put in time at the local dojo a couple of evenings a week, and it made a difference in the way I moved, in the way I sized up situations and people.

But I wasn't O'Sensei, the founder of the art, who'd waved his hands and taken down six thugs unharmed when he was an old man. I was a young cop out on the street who needed to not let anyone know what he could do.

I couldn't afford to back down, but I couldn't take them down either. Even if I tried, I doubted I'd get the chance to face them one at a time, and I'm not into mob scenes.

"Look't the way he moves. Pretty boy. Rent boy. Gonna do us if you keeping on this turf."

A police car on slow patrol pulled around the corner of the block and stopped in front of us. "What's going on here?"

I've never been so glad to hear Brown's voice in my life.

"Nothin', officer. We just sayin' hello to this new guy." All the bandanna crowd nodded. After aiming stonefaced stares toward the voice of authority, they faded back toward the alley.

"Move along." Brown scowled. I could tell that part of the scowl was on my behalf and part of it was aimed at me; Henri Brown hates to wear a uniform. "You, there. New guy. What's your name?"

"John."

"What's your last name, John?" Brown's good at towering over people when he wants to look mean and impressive.

"Smith. John Smith."

"Where were you last night, around 9 p.m."

"Around, man. Just hanging. What's it to you?"

"Well, Mr. Smith, you fit the description of someone who knocked over a liquor store on Twenty-Second Street last night. You're under arrest." Brown reached for me and I squirmed a little, but he slapped the cuffs on me and hustled me into the squad car. I made my hands into fists to make it look good; the cuffs were so loose they nearly fell off.

"You okay, Hairboy?" Brown's voice was deep with concern.

"Yeah. Thanks for the rescue. It wasn't going to be pretty in a few minutes."

He chuckled. "Yeah. Those punks didn't know how outclassed they were, going up against you. Simon wants to see you, so I'm taking you down to the station, okay? He sent a patrol car to keep an eye out while we're downtown. Relax, I'll take the cuffs off once we're there."

"Oh, good. I can't tell you how much I'd appreciate a clean bathroom right now."

Brown's chuckle warmed me almost as much as the heater he'd turned on the minute he got me into the patrol car.

***

I didn't think of using animal behavioral analogies to examine the Cascade Police when I first started studying closed societies. I should've done it from the start; it works really well as a conceptual framework, even if it's a bit unorthodox for most methodologies.

The strict hierarchies, the set-in-granite etiquette of rank and position, and the adherence to a common goal were all wolf traits. I should've seen that before, but then I spent most of my time with detectives, and they were a lot more like bears than wolves. Bears work independently, even if they're in the same place; you don't see cooperation along a salmon run during fishing season unless it's a mother flipping fish to her cubs. The kind of growls and snarls that come from the bullpen when Simon's upset or when a bust goes bad sound a lot more like a sleuth of bears than anything else I've ever heard.

One reference book I read says that it should be a sloth of bears, not a sleuth. If that's so, it only applies to the Major Crimes Unit when the coffee cart comes around. Simon's not one to encourage sloth, not on stakeouts or any other time, even if he does have a couch in his office for late nights.

Individually, in their personal behavior, I could see them all as different animals even if the collective behavior appears pack-like. Rafe is a fox, quick, clever, always a little more there than you think under that sleek outside. Megan is a puma, or one of those quirky dingos from Australia, an insider and an outsider at the same time. Joel's a badger, always digging at what's in front of him, or maybe a raccoon because of the way he takes apart bombs as if they're the most fascinating thing on the planet. Then there are the ones who are really bears Brown and Simon and Jim -- with Brown as a big imperturbable black bear and Simon as the biggest Kodiak in Alaska. Actually, Brown reminds me of Baloo sometimes, and Simon of the big bear in the movie, "The Bear," but I'd never tell either of them that. Jim's a Plains grizzly bear as much as he's a black jaguar; both are protective and unpredictable, fierce, territorial, and loners.

Funny thing. Simon has never once objected to my referring to the unit as a zoo. He knows he can't lie to me about anything as obvious as that.

***

"We're going to be by the book on this, B.J., just in case," Henri muttered. "Got to keep the cuffs on you and stick you in an interview room. I'll take you back to my place for a shower afterward, before I drop you back on the street, if you want."

"Thanks, man. I'd really appreciate that." Then the implications hit me. "Simon thinks someone from the Department is in on this mess with McSweeney?"

"We don't know; all we know is it's a big player, someone who's really good at being invisible. So we take the precautions, okay?"

I nodded. We both knew how it worked. You don't lie to your own people outright, but you don't tell them anything they don't have to know, just in case you need to know how someone learned something that had been kept confidential.

All the Major Crimes detectives were in the biggest interview room on the fifth floor, waiting for me, when I got in. I shucked my hands out of the loose cuffs easily and handed them back to Brown; sometime I'd show him how I compressed the bones in my hand, but not today. Simon handed me a cup of his best coffee, and Jim gave me a plate with a smoked turkey and swiss cheese sandwich and an apple-cinnamon donut on it as soon as I sat down.

"How's it going, Sandburg? You all right?" Simon asked me in his Official Captain Banks voice.

"Fine. Thanks for the cavalry; it wouldn't have been good for the cover if I'd had to show those guys what I learned at the academy." I sipped the hot coffee and felt my whole body enjoy it; good coffee isn't sex, but it could almost be as good at times and this was one of them. As I ate, I filled them in on the past day's work.

"They've taken the bait; it's just a matter of reeling them in now," Simon said. "Rafe?"

"Informants say the big deal's going down tonight or tomorrow, not sure which. It should be over with by tomorrow midnight," he said.

"If they haven't done it by tomorrow evening, they're probably using this as a front and doing the deal at a different site. If we find out anything like that, you come in off the street, B.J. and we send out Rafe," Simon said. "It's not a reflection on you. I don't want you looking too familiar out there."

"I realize that," I said. It made sense; if something doesn't work, do something else. "I think it might be wise for me to move around a bit more for the rest of the day."

"Probably a good idea. How about here, by Consolidated Manufacturing?" He pointed out an area on the map on the table. "It's more or less neutral territory for gangs, and it's still within the target area."

I nodded. "What about tonight?"

"One of us will require your services for the evening," Simon smiled. "Maybe more than one."

"I can hardly wait," I said, grinning at him.

As they were leaving, Megan leaned toward me and whispered, "Sandy, does John Smith do women? I've got this fantasy -- "

"Cool your jets, Connor," Jim said, coming up behind her, "it's a stake-out, not spin-the-bottle."

"Well, you had your turn with him yesterday," she retorted. "Can't blame me for wanting some of the fun, too." She winked at me and moved back to her desk.

I hung back a moment with Jim. "How're you doing?"

"I'm okay. No zones." He gave me a look I couldn't decipher for a moment. "You're good at this. You look like you fit in out there. It's almost scary."

"Just doing my job."

"I know." He looked away, then back at me. "The whispering is good. As long as I can see you, I can hear you, and you don't have to be too loud for me to pick up on it. If you need to get creative about it with someone around, I'll pick up on anything with Jim or Jimmy in particular."

"I thought you hated being called Jimmy." I raised an eyebrow.

"I do, but it'll get my attention if nothing else does. You did that already this morning."

"I did?"

"Yeah. The fox, jimmying the locks?"

"Oh, man, did I really say that? It sounds like Dr. Seuss."

He grinned at me. "What can I say? It worked. That was Robbie St. Pierre you saw."

"Tyrone's girlfriend? All right!" I high-fived him. "Now we just have to have Tyrone going in there too."

"We will. How're you doing?" He looked concerned. "Any problems?"

"Nothing I can't handle, so far."

Brown was as good as his word. I rode in the front of his car back to his place; he'd changed back into his usual chinos and shirt at the station. He pointed me toward a bathroom and I had a wonderful shower, even though I put the grubby clothes I'd been wearing back on again afterward. He dropped me off on the outskirts of the industrial district, in a crowd of factory workers hitting the second shift, and I scowled at him and got back into John Smith's skin, and walked away into the damp afternoon air.

Maybe it hit me more that afternoon because I'd just been with my friends, but the streets felt lonelier, and more dangerous. I witnessed two car break-ins, a minor mugging in which the victim was robbed but not beaten too badly, and the start of what appeared to be a nasty knife fight down the far end of an alley. I couldn't do anything about any of it except mutter to myself and hope Jim would take appropriate action.

"Jimmy, jiminy. that poor sucker's going down for the count over there, in the alley. Bad news for his bill collectors...another driver down the street lost his keys, looks like, on the green Dodge..."

It was a kick in the gut. I was sworn to protect and serve, but if I tried to protect these people I'd be failing in my job. If the police suddenly had too heavy a presence in this area it would imperil the investigation; it was more important to watch the building and notice who went in and out. Even with the justification, I felt bad for the man who lost his wallet and cash, and the people whose cars were stolen.

Sometimes you have to live with what you can't do, but that doesn't mean it has to feel good. The long afternoon made me feel smaller and more alone than I had in a long time. Sometimes real life is too real. I felt the damp concrete under my hand and rubbed my palm against the gritty edge, rough and crumbly, scraping into my skin.

***

What we perceive through our senses is what's real to us, as much as what we do in our minds to interpret it. This is one of the reasons that Jim's senses going haywire distresses him so much; if he can't trust what his body is telling him, how can he trust what his mind is saying also? In my case, since I don't have those enhanced senses, it tends to work the other way too the way I feel will affect the way I perceive sense information. If I'm happy, I don't notice the cold as much, for instance. This kind of thing is the basis for a lot of psychosomatic illness, but also the basis for most of the mind-body control work that I've taught Jim.

If you think you're holding fire in your hands, they warm up because blood will rush to the hands and increase circulation. It's a fact. If you have a pounding headache and you visualize a cool mountain lake, the pounding will gradually go away, depending on your powers of imagination. You're controlling the way your body reacts to stimuli.

It's harder for me to control the things in my mind than the reactions of my body. I can't remember a time when Naomi wasn't meditating, and when I wasn't learning about meditation myself, whether I was doing it or not. A lot of eastern-style meditation is concerned with watching what is happening to the body, and letting that knowledge just pass by without value judgments or becoming attached to it. Letting go, like this, can be a kind of control or a way of liberation, or both.

I've wished often that I'd paid more attention the time she talked to the monks who did tummo, the ones who learned to use their body heat so efficiently that they could be put outdoors in the winter wearing wet sheets and steam the sheets dry. It's real. They do it. I've seen it. I just don't know how. Maybe if I knew how to use my mind to control my body that well, I'd be able to control some of the images in my mind that I can't get away from, like the pictures of the little kids who'd gotten into the drugs made in and sold from that building down the street, and the horrors they were enduring in the hospital now.

Jim said once that I had enough willpower to be anything I wanted, but that I'd have to rule my heart better in order to be a cop, because it broke too easily -- not that he's the expert on keeping his heart whole, either. But I'm the city's shaman, its spiritual guardian, and the people of the city are my tribe as well, guarded by my pack of wolves. I know that the day I'm not disturbed by part of my pack in pain, I'm less than anyone's caricature of a wolf, no longer a shaman, and less than a man.

***

Around seven p.m., as I lounged against a wall near a church on Sixteenth, three blocks from the main action, I thought I saw Ornett Willis, one of the main suspects in the drug deal, coming out of the house at 1836 and moving fast around a corner out of sight. I dutifully murmured something to myself and Jim, and kept an eye out for him to return, but I didn't see him anywhere. And then the woman I saw before came out again -- from 1836, not 1838. They had to be connected.

"...man, there's that fox again, coming out of the wrong hole. Wonder if there's a tunnel in there, or a hidden stairway to heaven. No way can she walk through walls, not with that figure..."

Some of the workers at the machine tool shop down the street who'd worked late were leaving, and some of the other factory workers were heading out for supper breaks a little later. I leaned back into a recessed doorway and watched them go by. A couple dropped change into my cup, and got a muttered, "Thanks," in return. None of them met my eyes, which was just as well.

A man I hadn't seen before wandered up to the house, knocked on the side door and was admitted. He turned on his way in the door and I saw his profile for a second. I said, quietly, "Jim. McSweeney's in the house."

Within two minutes a patrol car drove past, as if routinely. As it slowed for the corner, I saw what looked like a hatch cover open in the roof, and McSweeney climbed out, followed by two more men. It was hard to see who they were against the sunset sky, but one of them moved in a way that looked too familiar, and I wished that Jim was here watching instead of me. There were too many people around for me to mutter enough to make sense, so I pretended to sneeze and, under cover of my hand, said, "Jim. Jimmy. Skyline. Look up. Twins up there, and one of them looks real familiar."

The men had jumped from the roof of 1836 South Fourteenth to 1850 South Fifteenth, taken a side trip to 1857 across a narrow alley and gone down the staircase from the roof there. From where I sat, I could see it all and couldn't do anything except mutter insanely and hope Jim heard me.

"History lesson, fourteenth century on: 1836, how 'bout them Knicks; 1850, June 15th, gotta find some relief; on to 1857, down the stairway to heaven...."

The patrol car moved smoothly past me.

And nothing happened that I could see.

***

I was watching the fading sunlight on the sidewalk, feeling the chill in the shadows start to move through my clothing, when I heard the sound of a woman's high heels on concrete. She stopped in front of me, long-legged, in a tight skirt and a long blond wig.

"You selling or buying?" I said sarcastically.

Her blue eyes flashed. "Whatever it takes. You want to come and get warm, or you want to talk?" One of these days I'm going to have to give Megan a few pointers on dealing with her accent on the street. All things considered, she was doing well. "I've got a place."

"Sounds good to me." I straightened and slouched along next to her for a block or so, and went into one of the brownstones. The room on the second floor had been used for surveillance in a sting four months earlier, I remembered. It was sparsely furnished, but warm.

She closed the door, turned and hugged me. "You looked awful out there, Sandy."

"It's been a long day," I said, just holding on for a moment for the sheer emotional nourishment of body warmth. "Any news?"

She shook her head. "Simon and Jim were flipping a coin to see which of them gets to take you home later on." She handed me a take-out bag of Chinese food, complete with a hot cup of green tea. "Dinner's on me."

"Thanks." It was chicken with vegetables, and tasted like heaven after Speedy's sausages. "So which of them won?"

"You'll just have to wait and see, Sandy." She grinned. "Don't worry, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Rafe and Brown are splitting backup on surveillance, along with the uniforms." She raised an eyebrow. "Jim said you'd seen Willis? He's out there keeping watch now. Word is that the deal goes down in a few hours." She watched me wolfing down my food. "Is there anything I can do to make this easier for you?"

I gave her a glance that I didn't mean to be quite as provocative as she took it. "Muss me up a bit before I go back on the street. It's got to look good."

"Of course," she said, checking the view out the window. "I can do that, Sandy. All in the interest of professionalism." She paused. "Something's bothering you, isn't it."

I put the empty takeout box on the table. "I saw a man getting mugged this afternoon, and I couldn't do anything to help him. He lost his Social Security money. What's he going to live on this month?" I gulped the hot tea to distract myself from my thoughts, from my emotions. "I saw part of a knife fight in Tailors Alley, between two kids who should have been in junior high school. One of them probably won't live through the night. I couldn't do anything there either."

Megan's eyes shone with compassion. "I know, Sandy. It's a killer. But you know something?" She took my hand in hers and gave it a little shake. "You tell Jim all the time that he can't save everyone. Well, neither can you. You have to do what you're here for, and if it works out right there'll be less drugs on the street and fewer children being hurt."

"I know that." I said. "It's still a bitch." I shivered. "Thanks anyway."

"I think this is where the mussing-up comes in." She took the cup out of my other hand and put it on the desk. "You all right with this?" It wasn't an idle question. I nodded. "All right."

Megan ran her hands up through the curls on the top of my head, and over my ears, touching the sensitive places along the rims, and down my throat, and across my chest and just touched the nipple ring, which made my skin ripple with unexpected desire. When she kissed me, it started slowly and built its own head of steam, which went straight down my spine to the pelvis and was magnified and multiplied and acquired its own momentum.

I took the awful blond wig in my hands and kissed her back, and even if it was a kiss born of loneliness and fear and the need for human contact it had its own virtue, its own rightness, its own measure of need met and want fulfilled -- and it met an equal response.

When we broke apart, we stared into each other's eyes for a moment, and our hands dropped away from each other. She was the first to speak, as she looked away. "I'm sorry, Sandy."

"Don't be. It's part of the job. I'm supposed to look used."

"I don't like doing it, that's all." She flushed. "I don't mean that. It's the using part."

"I know. Thanks." I touched her shoulder, and she looked across at me from the bed where we'd fallen. "How about dinner, some time next week, and we can just talk?"

"All right." She stood and gathered up the trash. "Dinner's on me."

"Not that I needed the incentive, but thanks."

We managed to smile again, tentatively, as if what had just happened was too close to what the bystander on the street would expect, and then Megan leaned toward me and kissed my cheek. I held her close for a moment, grateful that she was there, a friend, backing me up, and when we let go of each other we went down to the street and walked off our separate ways without looking back.

She'd stuffed fifty dollars into my pocket for emergency money when I wasn't noticing it, along with an oatmeal-honey-granola bar in case I got hungry later on.

Just feeling the granola bar in my pocket kept me warm a long time after the heat of the kisses had cooled.

***

In ancient Greece, according to some sources, the temples that were dedicated to various deities were also homes to those deities' patron animals not the same thing as the animals that were sacrificed to those deities. The temple of Apollo in Delphi, they say, had its own snake, fed milk every day and tame enough for the oracle to wear it around her shoulders. The temple of Zeus had a bull -- possibly an aurochs, before they were extinct; certainly the aurochs is the bull in the famous Cretan wall painting of the bull dancers. I think the panther or leopard was for Dionysus. I don't know whether the Greeks kept wolves at their temples, though the legends of Artemis had her running with a wolf pack. The wolf was an emblem of Loki, the great Fenris wolf who was a son of the Trickster and who could break any bonds.

There's an exception to the rule: the wolf, held sacred to the god, was sacrificed annually at Lycopolis, in ancient Egypt, just as the Acagchmem tribe in California killed their sacred buzzard and the Thebans killed a sacred ram. In each case it was an annual rite, a kind of sacrifice of the god to the god.

Then again, nobody asked the god's opinion, or even the wolf's.

I know my spirit guide wolf is there, though it doesn't sing for me. Or maybe it does, and I can't hear it. All I can ask is this: Stay with me, please. There are larger creatures in the night, and the pack is far away.

***

It still bothered me that I'd seen McSweeney's exit route and told Jim, as well as I could, with no result. Was I getting hung out to dry here by some of the uniforms who didn't understand how I'd made detective so fast? Was I in more trouble from them than from McSweeney?

If I could have whimpered, I would have. Instead I scowled and shrugged my shoulders deeper into the leather jacket, and felt annoyed, all of which were totally in character.

The street lights had been on a while, and the occasional taxi was barreling through the dark streets toward the restaurant district, when the big man walked casually toward me on the sidewalk, dropped several bills in my cup, and said, "You available, kid?"

I looked him up and down. Tall, dark, with dangerously powerful shoulders and big hands, narrow hips and long legs under black denim, he could have his pick of anyone along the street, probably anyone in the city. What was he doing, choosing me?

"Yeah. You want some company?"

"I want more than that," he growled, the sound coming so deep down in his chest that I shivered. "You think you can handle it?"

I looked him up and down from behind lowered eyelids, through my lashes, as if trying to hide the heat I felt. "Oh, yeah." My eyes came back up to his, which seemed to startle him a little though he recovered quickly enough. "Where?"

"You got a place?"

"Yeah." I emptied the cup into my pocket, turned and walked toward the grubby rooming house, my shadow close by.

"Upstairs," he growled behind me, and we went up the stairs quietly to the little room with the lumpy mattress, and I unlocked the door and went in ahead of him and locked it behind him.

I turned around again. "What's your pleasure?"

"You're getting entirely too good at this, Sandburg. Keep it up and Vice is going to be all over my ass to get you to transfer."

"Sorry, Captain." I let John's sullen sexuality fade and gave Simon a real grin. "It's been real ... real out there."

"I figured." He scanned the little room, which seemed all the smaller for having his big frame in the middle of it. "It's not the Hilton, that's for sure."

"No, the Hilton has genuine hot water."

"Sorry." He sat on the chair at the little wooden telephone stand that made do for a table. "One of the snitches on the street told Rafe that there was a hit going down tonight on someone around here, and we thought it would be better if one of us came up here to back you up. Just in case."

Just in case. "Who's the hit on?"

Simon shrugged. "We don't know. Jim's in the car, down the street, along with Megan. They'll switch off with Rafe and Brown later on."

"And I bet Jim will be there the whole night."

Simon snorted. "Like there was a way I could send him home when you're here?"

I nodded. "At least if they're around he'll be able to sleep a little. He listens for my heartbeat."

Simon stared at a dirty spot on the wall as he processed that. "Uh-huh. That explains a lot. So if your heartbeat changes in the middle of the night, from a bad dream or anything -- "

"He wakes up and he's downstairs almost sleepwalking. I think he's officially awake when he hits the bottom step." I looked at the bed; it had been big enough for me last night, with Jim wrapped around me for a while, but it wasn't anywhere near large enough for Simon. I couldn't imagine he'd be half as accommodating about it, either. "How do you want to do this?"

Simon waved a hand toward the bed. "Get some sleep, Sandburg. I've got a book. I'll keep watch."

"You've got a book?" I couldn't believe the pleading in my voice. "What are you reading?"

His eyebrows rose. "It's a Tom Clancy thriller. See?" He showed me the beat-up cover, and watched the hunger on my face with something like awe. "You're acting like a junkie, Blair."

"So shoot me. You knew books were my addiction years ago."

The pleading puppydog look won out, and he handed it over. "I want it back after you finish the first chapter." I stretched out on the bed, and he paced to the window, lowered the blind, and came back over to the chair. "You're doing pretty well, considering."

I looked up from an account of Jack Ryan's visit to London. "What, did you think I was only a geek?"

"You were never just a geek. You were a pain-in-the-ass geek." He watched me a little longer, something moving in his mind that wasn't quite going to come out of his mouth.

I nodded. "Yeah. I lived on the street one summer, back when I was sixteen. Naomi had gotten me all set for college, tuition paid, scholarships ready and housing in order, and then left for Findhorn without realizing that none of it would take effect for two months. So I was on my own. I thumbed across America, more or less. Did some camping, spent some time in New York and Chicago and San Francisco."

"About fourteen years ago, or so."

"Yeah." I shook my head; it still felt strange not having hair around my ears. "The people that were dropped out of mental hospitals during the Reagan Administration were all over the streets; it wasn't a really great place to be. I learned a lot, fast."

"I hear you." Simon sat on the edge of the bed, not without a first glance at me for permission. I nodded; it had to be more comfortable than that warped straight chair. "Nothing really bad happened to you, did it? You don't have to answer. None of my business."

I thought about it. One guy I was hitching with for two weeks was stabbed by a psycho who thought he looked too much like the psycho's ex-wife's boyfriend. I was mugged in one city less than an hour after I arrived, and managed to get on my feet again only because it happened almost on the steps of the Cathedral; the Cardinal's staff took me to the emergency room, got me food and spare clothes and gave me a little money from their own pockets to keep me going until I got to where I was headed. Even now, I still keep in touch with some of them. I nearly died of hypothermia when I was caught in a too-cold rain in the Rockies, and only survived because the other vagrants under a bridge wrapped me in their blankets and fed me their hot tea to warm me back up. When I reached San Francisco, I learned really quickly that the Summer of Love in which I'd been conceived had died long since, and the world could be a hard place if you didn't have friends around to fall back on ... and only a few of Naomi's many friends were willing to give me a place to sleep when she wasn't around. It was a good thing some of them thought I resembled Jim Morrison, though I can't say I ever saw the similarity in my mirror.

"Nothing really bad happened to me, no. But I saw a lot." That seemed to cover it as well as I could manage, and he nodded, not needing to know more.

"It shows. You blend in well. You ever do any acting? College plays, things like that?"

"A couple." I was almost through with the chapter, too soon, but I'd promised to give the book back and I would. "As an undergrad. It was a lot of fun."

"It all helps, in this job. No such thing as useless knowledge in police work," he said.

I handed him back the book. "I need to be back on the street again by 6:30 or so."

"You will be." He was already tipping the shade on the room's 40-watt desk lamp so the inadequate bulb wouldn't shine in my face.

"Captain. What happened out there today?"

"What do you mean?" He turned toward me, confused. "Was something going on that I don't know about?"

"You tell me. I saw McSweeney's getaway route when the patrol car went by; he goes out on the roof, over to the next street and down the alley and he's gone. Maybe Jim didn't hear me when I told him?" I rubbed my eyes, which felt tired after the long day. "This was around 7:30 or so. Patrol car went by like nothing was happening."

"Jim was taking a nap about then. Shit." Simon's face took on that thundercloud expression. "You're telling me one of our cars let McSweeney waltz off when we've got an APB out on him?" He shook his head and pulled out his cellphone. "Where's that exit again?"

I described it for him. "Looks to me as if there's a door between the two houses, too; his girlfriend doesn't have any trouble going in one and coming out the other."

"Right."

I played with the radiator and actually started to get some warmth out of it while Simon talked to Jim and Megan. From the little I could hear, plans were being remade. I was too sleepy to catch the details. I took off my shoes, which had finally dried out enough to be bearable, curled up under two blankets and fell asleep.

The voice that woke me a few hours later was a lot more familiar.

"Wake up, Chief."

"Mmph?" I smelled coffee, the good stuff. "Wha' time?"

"Four. McSweeney's home and we're moving in. Simon wants us to cover that alley exit you saw." He looked rueful. "Sorry I didn't pick up on that, Chief. I was taking a break."

"Hey, even a Blessed Protector gets down time. Don't worry. We'll get this done, and we can go home."

Incentive enough for getting out of a warm bed. I managed not to trip over a long pair of legs that moved out of the way just in time, made the briefest possible bathroom stop and pulled my shoes on. Jim handed me my shoulder holster and weapon, and the backup pistol in its horizontal waist holster, and I pulled them on, feeling myself put on my life again as I did it. John Smith had gone into that room with a tall dark stranger, but B.J. Sandburg was coming out of it with his partner.

As I reached for the door, Jim put one hand on my arm. His mouth came down on mine fast and hard, not a bruising kiss but a solid one.

"Later," I told him, patting him on the ass as I did it.

"Promises, promises," he said. We were out in the hall, quietly moving down the stairs to avoid any disturbance, and in the light of the 40-watt bulbs I could see the Jim I knew submerging himself again behind the protective cover of Detective Lieutenant James J. Ellison, Cascade's Finest, on duty.

As we reached the street Jim's eyes slid to the right, and I saw Simon, who said something quietly under his breath. Jim nodded, and he and I moved steadily down and around the corner until we were stationed at the mouth of the alley on Fifteenth Street, with Brown and Rafe backing us up and a squad car rolling quietly around the corner.

"It's going down now," Jim said, and a moment later I could hear the noises too -- doors smashing open, angry confused voices -- and running footsteps, across the roof, down the metal fire stairs, jumping onto the brick alley and slipping a bit on the wet, sooty brickwork.

Tyrone McSweeney wasn't a small man; he was nearly the size of Simon, but neither he nor his two companions expected the reception he found when he ran out of Colliers Alley into the waiting arms of Major Crime. We'd kept all the men and cars out of view from the alley, so they had no idea what they would meet when they ran out into the street.

As soon as they reached the sidewalk, Jim's voice rang out. "Police. Throw down your weapons." McSweeney stopped, and seemed to shudder, but it was a ruse he'd dropped a throwing knife into his hand from a sleeve pouch with that movement. When he brought his hand up, Jim fired and the bullet rang off the carbon steel knife like a bell. The knife twisted violently in McSweeney's hand, slicing it badly, and he dropped it to the pavement as Jim came forward with the handcuffs. One of McSweeney's friends tried to run for it, but I tripped him up, and after Brown fell on him, a little hard, he decided trying to get away wasn't going to work. Rafe followed the third man as he tried to run back into the alley, and tackled him into a trash heap. He cuffed the guy before he got up, shook the crushed take-out boxes and bits of paper off himself, and returned with a grin behind his prisoner.

"You, my friend, are hitting the showers before you go home. Good thing I've got those trash bags in the trunk for you to sit on in the patrol car," Brown told him.

Rafe waved it off. "You've been hanging around Ellison too long, Look, I expect to get my work clothes dirty. It's not that big a deal."

"Hey, you want to ride back in the squad car instead of with me, that's fine. I just don't want to have to get the smell of formerly Kentucky Fried out of my upholstery, after we get back to the station and change cars.." Brown turned his nose up. "And I don't know about you, but I'm not spending my day off cleaning out this car."

I looked across at Jim, who was reading McSweeney his rights and putting him into a patrol car. As soon as he was done, he came over to me. "Ready to go do paperwork, partner?"

"I never thought I'd be that hungry for the sight of the printed word. Actually, no. I'm not that hungry for it now." I leaned across and picked an unnoticed piece of trash off Rafe's back. "Plenty to read right here. Polysorbate, sesame seed oil, polyunsaturated --"

Rafe threw his hands up in surrender. "Okay, I get the picture. Sheesh, you guys are so subtle."

***

We headed back to the station in the unmarked department car Jim had signed out, on the grounds that his truck was too identifiable. On the way back, my partner took one look at me and pulled into an all-night donut shop, came out with two coffees and half a dozen donuts, and handed them to me. He inhaled a buttermilk donut and half his coffee, put the cup in the holder, and started the car to head back to the station.

My first donut was chocolate unglazed, the second cinnamon apple. As I ate them and gulped the coffee, Jim glanced at me as if drinking in my presence. I cocked an eyebrow in his direction and he shrugged. "What can I say? I missed having you around."

"Same here, Jim. Maybe that's why I've been talking to myself about you for two days."

"You saying good things about me behind my back, Chief?" He loosened up a little, the relief of having the job done showing in his face as the harsh lines receded.

"Maybe. What happened about the hit last night?"

"Dealer over on Seventeenth got a knife in the ribs; his buddies thought he was talking to us." Jim rubbed his hand over his hair, a reflex he has when he's feeling at a loss. "We didn't get there in time to stop it."

"Was he an informer?"

"Yeah, for Vice." Jim shut up completely for a moment, and it caught me by surprise. I took another gulp of coffee, choked on it a little as we hit a bump in the pavement, and he didn't comment.

"What is it?"

"Leon from Vice was in on it."

"Sergeant Louie Leon? From Vice?"

He nodded reluctantly, looking disgusted. "I really hate it when a cop sells out. When we got to the hit, we found Leon's prints all over the place, and evidence linking him to the McSweeney dealings. He's been in it up to his ears for a long time, looks like. Maybe even back to when I was in Vice."

"Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Jim."

"Yeah, well, he knew what he was getting into when he started taking McSweeney's money. And I.A.'s going to be all over his cases now, going as far back as they can." Jim shrugged. "I'm glad I never worked with him much. That's going to be a real mess."

We rode along a while, neither of us saying anything. I thought about wolves and bears and territoriality, and the protectiveness of packs. If a wolf sided with the pack's enemies, the best it might expect would be to be torn apart by the alpha wolf's teeth in its throat. But wolves didn't comprehend or commit that level of betrayal. Only humans did that.

As we pulled into the parking lot under the station, Jim said, "Simon told me that once booking is over we can go home, come back to fill out the reports tomorrow, and take the rest of the next two days off."

"Can't be too soon for me. Just one thing, when we get back to the loft?"

The watchful, almost wary expression was there in the back of his eyes again, the same one that had been hiding there yesterday when he was listening to me tell him about what I'd seen on the street. "What?"

"I don't want to see a burger or a piece of grilled sausage for the next three months."

Jim smiled. "Tell you what, Chief, I'm pretty tired of them myself. I might not even eat them for a while, thought I'm not promising I'll last a whole three months. How's that?"

"A miracle, man. I must be hearing things."

He parked the car, shut the engine down, and turned toward me. He didn't touch me again, but his eyes were so intent I could feel them on my skin. "And you know what time it will be when we get to the loft?" A promise deeper than a smile, more certain than the sun rising in an hour or so. "It'll be later."

I felt the warmth of the promise ignite within me. "Any time, partner," I said softly. "Any time."

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this started as 12 pages excised from Identity, and then it grew a bit.
> 
> Written around 1997 or so.


End file.
